Supplier firm Innovation Line (asi/62660) suffered a fire, which is alleged to be arson, on Saturday morning at one of its facilities. The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) was alerted to a blaze at Innovation Line’s Culver City, CA, office on Teale St. at 7:25 on Saturday morning. While it took firefighters about two hours to knock down the fire, there were no reported injuries.

In a note provided to Counselor, Innovation Line said it “operates in four buildings and only one was partially damaged by fire. Our customer service team will be contacting affected distributors shortly.”

In an interview with Counselor yesterday, Innovation Line said it has already set up temporary offices at a local hotel and was beginning to resume operations. David Kagel, chief operating officer of Innovation Line, said that only 20% of the company’s inventory was destroyed in the fire, and that the supplier’s factories in China were quickly shipping products to make up for the losses. “Most of our inventory and about half of our production was completely untouched,” Kagel said. “Our goals are to be at about 50% of our normal production capacity by the end of this week and 90% of our normal production capacity by the end of next week.”

In the company’s note, Innovation Line President Eddie Blau said the company was the apparent victim of arson. The LAFD website reported that its Arson Section is currently investigating the fire cause and the estimated dollar loss is being tabulated. Despite the damage, Blau said he expects the company to get its operations back to normal as quickly as possible. “We are very happy to advise there were no casualties and with the help of our loyal customers and dedicated staff, we are confident operations will swiftly return to normal,” said Blau. “We appreciate our customers’ understanding during this difficult time as we rebuild our production operations.”

The supplier also said that its phone system is temporarily operating on a limited basis, so it asks distributors to contact the company through a variety of email addresses: For in house orders: Lanieta@innovation-line.com; quotes, pricing or production: Antonia@innovation-line.com; accounting: Ana@innovation-line.com; all other information or inquiries: Info@innovation-line.com. The company also asks distributors to check its website at www.innovation-line.com for inventory availability prior to placing a new order.

Kagel said the company is mostly concentrating now on contacting distributors. “It’s a miracle we could get so much accomplished after this in just 48 hours,” he said. “We’re 100% focused on communicating with customers and keeping the dialog going so we can talk about current and future orders.”

See photos below of the company as they recover from the fire.